The Corp - Counterattack Part 2

"But, just as a matter of general information," Captain Martin added, "I've got business at Pearl in the morning, and I won't be able to get back here before 0930 or so."

He had seen in their eyes that both had realized further argument was useless. And, more important, that they had just dismissed his objections as irrelevant. Charles Galloway was going to take that F4F-4 Wildcat off from Ewa in the morning, come h.e.l.l or high water.

"Thank you, Sir."

"Good luck, Galloway," Captain Martin said, and walked away.

(Four) Above USS Saratoga (CV.3) Task Force 14 0620 Hours 16 December 1941 A moment after Charley Galloway spotted the Saratoga five thousand feet below him, she began to turn into the wind. They had spotted the Wildcat, and her captain had issued the order, "Prepare to recover aircraft."

By that time Sara knew he was coming. Ten minutes after Galloway took off from Ewa, the Navy was informed he was on the way, and was asked to relay that information to the Saratoga. A Navy captain, reflecting that a week before, such idiocy, such blatant disregard for standing orders and flight safety, would have seen those involved thrown out of the service-most likely via the Navy prison at Portsmouth-decided that this wasn't a week ago, it was now, after the Pacific Fleet had suffered a disaster, and he ordered a coded message sent to the Saratoga to be on the lookout for a Marine F4F-4 believed attempting a rendezvous.

As the Saratoga turned, so did her screening force, the other ships of Task Force 14. They were the cruisers Minneapolis, Astoria, and San Francisco; nine destroyers; the Neches, a fleet oiler; and the USS Tangier, a seaplane tender pressed into service as a transport. They had put out from Pearl Harbor at 1600 the previous day.

Charley r.e.t.a.r.ded his throttle, banked slightly, and pushed the nose of the Wildcat down.

He thought, That's a bunch of ships and a lot of people making all that effort to recover just one man and one airplane.

He dropped his eyes to the fuel quant.i.ty gauge mounted on the left of the control panel and did the mental arithmetic. He had thirty-five minutes of fuel remaining, give or take a couple of minutes. It was now academic, of course, because he had found Task Force 14 on time and where he believed it would be, but he could not completely dismiss the thought that if he hadn't found it, thirty minutes from now, give or take a few, he would have been floating around on a rubber raft all alone on the wide Pacific. Presuming he could have set it down on the water without killing himself.

By the time he was down to fifteen hundred feet over the smooth, dark blue Pacific, and headed straight for the Saratoga's bow, she had completed her turn into the wind. Galloway looked down at her deck and saw that she was indeed ready to receive him. He could see faces looking up at him, and he could see that the cables had been raised. And when he glanced at her stern, he could see the Landing Control Officer, his paddles already in hand, waiting to guide him aboard.

He started to lower his landing gear.

He did not do so in strict accordance with Paragraph 19.a.(l) of AN 01-190FB-1, which was the U.S. Navy Bureau of Aeronautics Pilot's Handbook of Flight Operating Instructions for F4F-Series Aircraft. Paragraph 19.a.(l), which Charley Galloway knew by heart, said, "Crank down the landing gear." Then came a CAUTION: "Be sure the landing gear is fully down."

The landing gear on the Wildcat, the newest and hottest and most modern fighter aircraft in the Navy's (and thus the Marine Corps') a.r.s.enal, had to be cranked up and down by hand. There was a crank on the right side of the c.o.c.kpit. It had to be turned no less than twenty-nine times either to release or retract the gear. The mechanical advantage was not great, and to turn it at all, the pilot had to take his right hand from the stick and fly with his left hand while he cranked hard, twenty-nine times, with his right hand.

Charley Galloway had learned early on-he had become a Naval Aviator three days after he turned twenty-one-that there wasn't room in the c.o.c.kpit for anyone to come along and see how closely you followed regulations.

The records of VMF-211 indicated that Charles M. Galloway was currently qualified in F2A-3, F4F-4, R4D, and PBY-5 and PBY-5A aircraft.

The R4D was the Navy version of the Douglas DC-3, a twin-engined, twenty-one pa.s.senger transport, and the PBY-5 was the Consolidated Catalina, a twin-engined seaplane that had started out as sort of a bomber and was now primarily used as a long-range observation and antisubmarine aircraft. The PBY-5 A was the amphibian version of the PBY-5; retractable gear had been fitted to it.

The Marine Corps had no R4D and PBY-5 aircraft a.s.signed to it; Charley Galloway had learned to fly them when he and some other Marine pilots had been borrowed from the Corps to help the Navy test them, get them ready for service, and ferry them from the factories to their squadrons. He had picked up a lot of time in the R4D, even going through an Army Air Corps course on how to use it to drop parachutists.

He was therefore, in his judgment, a good and experienced aviator, with close to two thousand hours total time, ten times as much as some of the second lieutenants who had just joined VMF-211 as replacements. He was also, in his own somewhat immodest and so far untested opinion, one h.e.l.l of a fighter pilot, who had figured out a way to get the G.o.dd.a.m.ned gear down without cranking the G.o.dd.a.m.ned handle until you were blue in the face.

It involved the physical principle that an object in motion tends to remain in motion, absent restricting forces.

Charley had learned that if he unlocked the landing gear, then put the Wildcat in a sharp turn, the gear would attempt to continue in the direction it had been going. Phrased simply, when he put the Wildcat in a sharp turn, the landing-gear crank would spin madly of its own volition, and when it was finished spinning, the gear would be down. All you had to do was lock it down. And, of course, remember to keep your hand and arm out of the way of the spinning crank.

He did so now. The crank spun, the gear went down, and he locked it in place.

Then, from memory, he went through the landing check-off list: he unlocked the tail wheel; he lowered and locked the arresting hook, which, if things went well, would catch one of several cables stretched across the deck of the Saratoga and bring him to a safe but abrupt halt He pulled his goggles down from where they had been resting on the leather helmet, and then slid open and locked the over-the-c.o.c.kpit canopy.

He pushed the carburetor air control all the way in to the Direct position, r.e.t.a.r.ded the throttle, and set the propeller governor for 2100 rpm. He set the mixture control into Auto Rich, opened the cowl flaps, and lowered the wing flaps.

All the time he was doing this, he was turning on his final approach, that is to say, lining himself up with the deck of the Saratoga.

The Landing Control Officer was ready for him. Using his paddles, he signaled to Charley Galloway that he was just a hair to the right of a desirable landing path. Then, at the last moment, he made his decision, and signaled Charley to bring it in and set it down.

Charley's arresting hook caught the first cable, and the Wildcat was jerked to a sudden halt with a force that was always astonishing. Whenever he made a carrier landing, Charley Galloway felt an enormous sense of relief, and then, despite a genuine effort to restrain it, a feeling of smug accomplishment. Ships and airplanes were different creatures. They were not intended to mate on the high seas. But he had just done exactly that. Again. This made Carrier Landing Number Two Hundred and Six.

And there weren't very many people in the whole wide world who could do that even once.

As the white hats rushed up to disengage the cable, he quickly went through the "Stopping the Engine" checklist, again from memory.

By the time the propeller stopped turning and he had shut off the ignition, battery, and fuel selector switches, a plane captain was there to help him get out of the c.o.c.kpit. And he saw Major Verne J. McCaul, USMC, Commanding Officer of VMF-221, standing on the deck, smiling at him. VMF-221, equipped with fourteen F2A-3 Brewster Buffalos, was stationed aboard the Saratoga. Galloway had known him for some time, liked him, and was glad to see him.

Charley jumped off the wing root and walked to him. "I am delighted," said Major McCaul, who was thirty-five and looked younger, "nay, overjoyed to see you."

Galloway looked at him suspiciously.

"The odds were four to one you'd never make it out here," McCaul said. "I took a hundred bucks' worth at those odds, twenty-five of them for you."

"You knew I was coming?"

"There was a radio from Pearl about an hour ago," McCaul said.

Apparently it didn't say "arrest on sight," or there would be a Marine with irons waiting for me.

"Well, that certainly was very nice of you, Sir," Galloway said, not absolutely sure that McCaul wasn't pulling his leg.

Proof that he was not came when McCaul handed him five twenty-dollar bills.

It then occurred to him that he had, literally, jumped from the frying pan into the fire. He had made it this far. But the next stop was Wake Island. The odds, bulls.h.i.t aside, that Wake could be held against the j.a.panese seemed pretty remote. He had no good reason to presume that he would be any better a pilot, or any luckier, than the pilots of VFM-211 on Wake who had already been shot down.

Then he remembered what Big Steve Oblensky had once told him. The function of Marines was to stop bullets for civilians; that's what they were really paying you for.

"The Captain wants to see you after you're cleaned up," Major McCaul said. "In the meantime, I'm sorry to have to tell you, you're to consider yourself under arrest."

"Am I in trouble that deep, Major?"

"I'm afraid so, Charley. The Navy's really p.i.s.sed," Major McCaul said. "I'll do what I can for you, but ... they're really p.i.s.sed."

"Oh, h.e.l.l," Charley said. And then, not too convincingly, he smiled. "Well, what the h.e.l.l, Major. What can they do to me? Send me to Wake Island?"

Chapter Two.

(One) Washington, D.C.

19 December 1941 As his taxi drove past the White House, Fleming Pickering, a tall, handsome, superbly tailored man in his early forties, noticed steel-helmeted soldiers, armed with rifles, bayonets fixed, guarding the gates.

He wondered if they were really necessary. Was there a real threat to the security of either the President or the building itself? Or were these guards being used for a little domestic propaganda, a symbol that the nation had been at war for not quite two weeks, and that the White House was now the headquarters of the Commander in Chief?

Certainly, he reasoned, even before what the President had so eloquently dubbed "a day that will live in infamy," the Secret Service and the White House police must have had contingency plans to protect the President in case of war. These would have called for more sophisticated measures than the posting of a corporal's guard of riflemen at the White House gates.

Fleming Pickering, Chairman of the Board of the Pacific & Far Eastern Shipping Corporation, was not an admirer of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, President of the United States. This was not to say that he did not respect him. Roosevelt was, he acknowledged, both a brilliant man and a consummate master of the art of molding public opinion.

Roosevelt had managed to garner public support for policies-Lend-Lease in particular-that were, in Pickering's judgment, not only disastrous and probably illegal, but which had, in the end, on the day of infamy, brought the United States into a war it probably could have stayed out of, and which it was pathetically ill-prepared to fight.

Fleming Pickering was considerably more aware than most Americans of what an absolute disaster Pearl Harbor had been. He and his wife had been in Honolulu when the j.a.panese struck. They had witnessed the burning and sinking battleships at the Navy Base, and the twisted, smoldering carnage at Hickam Field.

Despite his personal misgivings about Roosevelt, less than an hour after the last j.a.panese aircraft had left, as he watched the rescue and salvage operations, he had understood that the time to protest and oppose the President had pa.s.sed, that it was clearly his-and everyone's-duty to rally around the Commander in Chief and make what contribution he could to the war effort.

Fleming Pickering had come to Washington to offer his services.

He had two additional thoughts as the taxi drove down Pennsylvania Avenue past the White House.

First, a feeling of sympathy for the soldiers standing there in the freezing cold in their steel helmets. A tin pot is a miserable sonofab.i.t.c.h to have to wear when it's cold and snowing and the wind is blowing. He knew that from experience. Corporal Fleming Pickering, USMC, had worn one in the trenches in France in 1918.

And second, that with a little bit of luck, when the American people learned the hard way what that sonofab.i.t.c.h in the White House had gotten them into, he could be voted out of office in 1944. If there was still something called the United States of America in 1944.

The taxi, a DeSoto sedan painted yellow, turned off Pennsylvania Avenue, made a sharp U-turn, and pulled to the curb before the marquee of the Foster Lafayette Hotel. A doorman in a heavy overcoat liberally adorned with golden cords trotted out from the protection of his gla.s.s-walled guard post and pulled open the door.

"Well, h.e.l.lo, Mr. Pickering," he said, with a genuine smile. "It's nice to see you, Sir."

"h.e.l.lo, Ken," Pickering said, offering his hand. "What do you think of the weather?"

Once out of the cab, he turned and handed the driver several dollar bills, indicating with his hand that he didn't want any change, and then walked quickly into the hotel and across the lobby to the reception desk.

There was a line, and he took his place in it. Four people were ahead of him. Finally it was his turn.

"May I help you, Sir?" the desk clerk asked, making it immediately plain to Fleming Pickering that the clerk had no idea who he was.

"My name is Fleming Pickering," he said. "I need a place to stay for a couple of days, maybe a week."

"Have you a reservation, Sir?"

Pickering shook his head. The desk clerk raised his hands in a gesture of helplessness.

"Without a reservation, Sir . . ."

"Is Mr. Telford in the house?"

"Why, yes, Sir, I believe he is."

"I wonder if you could tell him I'm here, please?"

Max Telford, resident manager of the Foster Lafayette Hotel, a short, pudgy, balding man wearing a frock coat, striped trousers, and a wing collar, appeared a moment later.

"We didn't expect you, Mr. Pickering," he said, offering his hand. "But you're very welcome, nonetheless."

"How are you, Max?" Pickering said, smiling. "I gather the house is full."

"Yes, indeed."

"What am I to do?" Pickering said. "I need a place to stay. Is there some Democrat we can evict?"

Telford chuckled. "I don't think we'll have to go that far. There's always room for you here, Mr. Pickering."

"Is Mrs. Fowler in town?"

"No, Sir. I believe she's in Florida."

"Then why don't I impose on the Senator?"

"I'm sure the Senator would be delighted," Telford said. He turned and took a key from the rack of cubbyholes. "I'll take you up."

"I know how to find it. Come up in a while, and we'll have a little liquid cheer."

"Why don't I send up a tray of hors d'oeuvres?"

"That would be nice. Give me fifteen minutes to take a shower. Thank you, Max."

Pickering took the key and walked to the bank of elevators.

Max Telford turned to the desk clerk.

"I know you haven't been with us long, Mr. Denny, but you do know, don't you, who owns this inn?"

"Yes, Sir. Mr. Foster. Mr. Andrew Foster."

"And you know that there are forty-one other Foster Hotels?"

"Yes, Sir."

"Well, for your general information, as you begin what we both hope will be a long and happy career with Foster Hotels, I think I should tell you that Mr. Andrew Foster has one child, a daughter, and that she is married to the chairman of the board of the Pacific & Far Eastern Shipping Corporation."

"The gentleman to whom you just gave the key to Senator Fowler's suite?" Mr. Denny asked, but it was more of a pained realization than a question.

"Correct. Mr. Fleming Pickering. Mr. Pickering and Senator Fowler are very close."

"I'm sorry, Mr. Telford, I just didn't know."

"That's why I'm telling you. There is one more thing. Until last week, we had a young Marine officer, a second lieutenant, in the house. His name is Malcolm Pickering. If he should ever appear at the desk here, looking for a room, which is a good possibility, I suggest that it would behoove you to treat him with the same consideration with which you would treat Mr. Foster himself; he is Mr. Foster's grandson, his only grandchild, and the heir apparent to the throne."

"I take your point, Sir," Mr. Denny said.

"Don't look so stricken," Telford said. "They're all very nice people. The boy, they call him 'Pick,' worked two summers for me. Once as a sous-chef at the Foster Park in New York, and the other time as the bell captain at the Andrew Foster in San Francisco."